Register for the Annual Meeting scheduled for November 21-23, 2010 in Charleston, South Carolina. Featured speakers include Donna Brazile, political strategist and news commentator; David Gergen, editor-at-large, U.S. News & World Report and senior political analyst, CNN; President-to-Presidents lecturer Freeman A. Hrabowski III, president, University of Maryland, Baltimore County. For complete program and registration information go here.

AASCU has received a $433,874 Learn and Serve America Higher Education grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service to design and implement a new civic minor in urban education. The minor will integrate K-12 service-learning experiences with urban public policy coursework, offering pre-service teachers and other undergraduates a coherent understanding of the larger context of urban education. Read more

California State University Fresno is featured on the Founding Celebrations page. The university is celebrating 100 years evolving from modest beginnings as a teachers college early in the 20th century into an acclaimed, culturally diverse, 21st century university offering educational opportunities through eight schools and colleges.  Read more

The Connecticut State University System (CSUS), which includes Central, Eastern, Southern and Western Connecticut State Universities, has collaborated on a series of activity pages for middle school classroom use aimed at encouraging students to begin taking the steps necessary to prepare for college. The series, called “Middle School Steps 2 College,” includes a variety of interactive activities, key facts and discussion points, suggested ways to learn more about college preparation, and suggestions on how to use available resources at home, school and in the community. Read more

For the first time in Stark County, 23 community organizations that all have a stake in the region’s environmental welfare have been collaborating as a result of efforts by the Hoover Initiative in Environmental Media at Kent State University at Stark. Although each group was already involved in learning about and working for the environment, it was apparent to Kent State Start project coordinators that working together and supporting one another, rather than overlapping or competing, would be the most beneficial approach to protect the environment. Read more

A new University of Central Florida study will examine how rising sea level’s could harm estuaries and coastal communities along the Florida Panhandle and Alabama and Mississippi coasts. The research, led by Scott C. Hagen, an associate professor of Civil Engineering, is a response to scientific studies that show sea level is rising along most of the U.S. coasts. Read more

The Student Support Services (SSS) program at Bluefield State College will receive federal funding for a five-year cycle, beginning September 1, 2010. The grant renewal, from the U.S. Department of Education, will exceed $368,000 and will permi BSC to continue to offer educational assistance to economically disadvantaged and/or first-generation college students, and students with a physical or learning disability. Read more

The California State University has received $62 million through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 to support roughly 200 individual projects on 22 campuses, focused primarily on outreach, teaching and research efforts in health, science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Read more

• CSU Dominguez Hills has received a $171,788 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to provide professional development workshops in June 2011 for high school teachers from across the country. Read more


• CSU Dominguez Hills has been awarded the first year allocation of a five-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education to continue the its Student Support Services (SSS) program for disadvantaged students. The first year award is fo $259,059, with the full award totally approximately $1.3 million. Read more

The College of Arts and Humanities at California State University, Fresno has received a $1 million endowment to support the new Center for Creativity and the Arts. The center will introduce interdisciplinary, university-wide thematic exhibitions involving all of the school and colleges at Fresno State. As a gallery, lecture hall, performance space and school and community organization, the Center for Creativity and the Arts will focus on its vision of academic enrichment. Read more

California State University, Monterey Bay will receive $1.27 million from the federal government to help low-income and first-generation college students and students with disabilities complete their education. Each year for five years, 160 incoming freshmen will benefit from the grant through academic advising, mentoring, financial assistance and special services to help them stay in school. Read more

Two Georgia College professors have been awarded $74,821 from the National Science Foundation, Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program. Victoria Deneroff and Rosalie Richards will use the funds to support one-year of planning to improve the quality of teaching and learning in rural, middle Georgia middle schools. Read more

• Northern Arizona University is helping shape the future of teaching history in northern Arizona schools. With the support of a nearly $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education, the Teaching American History program partners NAU with the Flagstaff Unified School District to offer fourth through 12th grade teachers new methods of and perspectives on teaching history. The project has the potential to enhance the knowledge and skills of up to 100 northern Arizona teachers over the three-year life of the project. Read more


• Northern Arizona University's Department of Psychology received a $400,000 National Science Foundation grant to continue studying compassion and empathy, particularly from the perspectives of underrepresented cultural groups. The three-year grant was awarded for the program “Hojooba’ bee la’ hooniil, Undergraduate Studies into the Social Psychophysiology of Compassion.” Read more

South Dakota School of Mines and Technology researchers were awarded $35,333,111 million dollars in research and development funding during Fiscal Year 2010, the highest amount in the history of the university. Read more

Tarleton State University’s Rural Law Enforcement (RLE) project recently received a huge boost in the form of $1.5 million in federal funds allocated to the program. RLE is designed to provide rural agencies with access to a secure database that allows those affiliated with the program to share information about crimes, criminals and illegal activities. Read more

Texas Woman’s University has been awarded a $744,422 grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) through the newly enacted Affordable Care Act of 2010. TWU will use the funds to expand its weekend nursing program in Dallas. Read more

University of Houston-Clear Lake received the following grants and gifts:

1. $225,000 from the Texas Regional Collaboratives for Excellence in Science and Mathematics Teaching to UH-Clear Lake for math and science teacher training, mentoring and outreach during 2010-11.


2. $25,000 “Rising to the Challenge” grant to UH-Clear Lake’s Success Through Education Programs and a $25,000 “Generation Proud” grant to UH-Clear Lake’s Celebrating Our Elders program was awarded by the Greater Texas Foundation.


3. $65,205 award from the Texas Workforce Commission to Clinical Associate Professor in Educational Leadership for the “2010 Summer Merit Program.”


4. $1 million to Associate Professor of Biology and Environmental Science and Executive Director of the Environmental Institute of Houston George Guillen for an umbrella contract, “Central and Southeast Texas Recreational Use Attainability Analyses Project,” from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.


5. $137,745 from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to Associate Professor of Biology and Environmental Science and Executive Director of the Environmental Institute of Houston George Guillen for “Texas Nutrient Criteria Development Support Project.”


6. $150,000 continuation grant from the Harris County Flood Control District for “Academic Research Related to Environmental and Water Quality” to Associate Professor of Biology and Environmental Science and Executive Director of the Environmental Institute of Houston George Guillen.


7. $40,000 to Professor of Psychology Dorothea Lerman from the Foundren Foundation to implement a 12-week pilot training program for parents/caregivers of children with autism.

A national leader in the field of teacher education, the University of Northern Colorado recently received a $1.2 million, five-year grant from the National Science Foundation to support and prepare math and science teachers to serve in high-need school districts, especially in rural areas. Read more

• UH-Clear Lake’s Environmental Institute of Houston Historian Alecya Gallaway was selected to receive the 2009 Ruth Lester Lifetime Achievement Award from the Texas Historical Commission in recognition of her contributions to historic preservation in Texas.


• University of Houston-Clear Lake has been named to the 2009 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll, the highest federal recognition a college or university can receive for its commitment to volunteering, service- learning and civic engagement. Read more

For the second consecutive year, six faculty members from The University of Texas-Pan American were recognized with The University of Texas System’s Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Awards for their innovative teaching methods in the classroom. Read more

The College of Education at Louisiana Tech University has produced two of the state’s 2011 Teachers of the Year. Jenny Marie Blalock, a first-grade teacher at A.E. Phillips Laboratory School, was named the 2011 Louisiana Elementary School Teacher of the Year and Julie Bartlett Stephenson, an AP English teacher at Ruston High School, was named the 2011 Louisiana High School Teacher of the Year. Read more

1. Kimberly Melhus, assistant professor of visual communication at Northern Arizona University, published "Usability Study of the Motorola Razr V3 Cellphone" in the peer-reviewed journal, Design Principles and Practices: An International Journal. The article details how Melhus and a team of designers developed two cell phone design prototypes geared toward tech-savvy baby boomers.


2. Dennis Tanner, professor of health sciences at Northern Arizona University, published a new book, Exploring the Psychology, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Neurogenic Communication Disorders. It addresses psychological factors in the diagnosis and treatment of aphasia, apraxia of speech, the dysarthrias and the communication disorders associated with traumatic brain injury.


3. Patricia Murphey, assistant professor of visual communication, published "Practical Learning in the VisualDESIGNLab: Designing for Clients in an Undergraduate Academic Environment" in Design Principles and Practices: An International Journal (Vol. 4: Issue 4). The article describes the School of Communication’s VisualDESIGNLab that Murphey began as a place for students to relate their theoretical knowledge of design to the practical demands of workin with actual clients from the community.


4. Natalie Cawood, lecturer for the department of Sociology and Social Work, had her peer-reviewed article, “Barriers to the Use of Evidence-Supported Programs to Address School Violence," published in the journal Children and Schools .


5. The collection Communication Writings: Some Beginnings, edited by Martin D. Sommerness, NAU professor of journalism, has just been released by Kendall Hunt Publishing of Dubuque, Iowa. A number of NAU faculty contributed to the book.


6. Andrew Griffin, NAU’s director of Veterans Affairs and Emergency Management, and Chris Lockwood, an associate professor in NAU’s W.A. Franke College of Business, published “Creating Active Learning Applications and Opportunities for an Online Leadership Course” in the September issue of the Academy of Educational Leadership Journal.


7. NAU adjunct biology professor and tropical field biologist Marty Crump had a new children’s book published by Boyds Mills Press. In Mysteries of the Komodo Dragon: The Biggest, Deadliest Lizard Gives Up Its Secrets, Crump describes how her friends, colleagues and other scientists have studied—and escaped—the Komodo dragon. The book unravels the mysteries of how such a remarkable creature exists, how it uses the deadly germs in its saliva to its advantage and how those microbes may lead to cures for stubborn diseases.

• Northwest Missouri State and the city of Maryville are partnering to extend glass and paper recycling to the Maryville community. The project, dubbed “Reduce Your Paw Print: Taking it to the Community,” developed after Northwest received a glass recycling machine in March. Because the crusher is capable of handling more glass than what is deposited in recycling containers on campus, Northwest is extending collection to Maryville residents. Read more


• The Northwest Missouri State University Administration Building, with its century-old towers standing as symbols of culture, education and economic development, has been added to National Register of Historic Places. Read more

Researchers will admit that it is a difficult task to mentally visualize the complex problems that they investigate each day. This visualization obstacle has been solved by Dr. Russell Manson and his colleagues at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. Dr. Manson has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) major research instrumentation grant to bring a GeoDome to Stockton College. The GeoDome provides an environment to present simulations and visualizations for research. Read more (pdf)

The Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Southeast Missouri State University was selected to deliver a presentation at the University Economic Development Association (UEDA) Annual Summit set for Nov. 7-9 in Reno, Nev. The presentation is “Driving the “E-Ship”: Effective Techniques for Implementing Entrepreneurial Programs.” Read more

Troy University’s Center for International Business and Economic Development is offering government contracting assistance to businesses in the Phenix City area. The Center, through its Small Business Development Center, operates the TROY Procurement Technical Assistance Center in Phenix City. Read more

Pearland, Texas residents will have more educational options with the addition of a university inside their city limits when University of Houston-Clear Lake Pearland Campus, which began offering classes in the new facility during fall 2010. Read more